The day of friends

Valentine's Day is here soon. Ystävänpäivä in Finnish, a direct translation would be something like "the day of friends". The Finnish word ystävänpäivä is actually quite describing, because for us February 14th is more about celebrating friendship, not that much of romantic love.

Then how do we celebrate ystävänpäivä? According to the people of post office Valentine's Day is the second busiest time of the year in terms of sending post cards and letters. That's why they publish a special edition of stamps around the Valentine's. In addition to sending post cards we celebrate Valentine's Day by eating candies. The sales figures of heart-shaped jellies and Brunberg's kisses take a small peak in mid-February. Bakeries have tried to create and advertise all kinds of Valentine's pastries with pink icing, but those ideas haven't flied too far; the February pastry market is already saturated with Runeberg's torte and Laskiaispulla, so there's no room for Valentine's pastry.

In Finland the Valentine's Day is quite minimalistic. Restaurants don't have a Valentine's menu for two, supermarkets are not selling loads of pink confetti. However, I'd like to propose a tradition for celebrating Valentine's Day in Finnish style - since ystävänpäivä was included into Finnish calendar officially in the 80's, let's celebrate it in the style of 80's: dig out a waffle maker (a piece of luxury from the 80's) from somewhere, invite your friends over and make a huge pile of heart-shaped waffles - since the heart-shaped waffle irons used to be the most common (and the only?) model available in Finland.

Four classics of Finnish literature

Kalevala. Elias Lönnrot collected traditional poems into national epic. Nowadays there are huge amount of streets, suburbs and companies in Finland named after Kalevala. Nerds, attention: J.R. Tolkien was inspired by Kalevala, and the outcome of his inspiration was the Lord of the Rings.

Plot in a nutshell: An old guy falls in love with a young girl. A younger guy has also his eyes on the girl. The old guy sings the young guy into swamp. A blacksmith makes a money-making machine. A bitch from north tries to steal the machine, and the old guy and his folk try to protect the machine.

Seitsemän veljestä - Seven brothers. Written by Aleksis Kivi. Kick-off for realism in the Finnish literature. Also a kick-off for respecting Finnish language within Finnish literature (until this the Finnish writers were writing mostly in Swedish).
Plot in a nutshell: Seven brothers are trying to learn to read. The youngest of the brothers starts to read first. Heard of bulls are chasing the brothers, the brothers survive barely by climbing on top of a stone. Some of the brothers get married.

Tuntematon sotilas - Unknown soldier. A mediocre war novel about Finnish battles in WW2 written by Väinö Linna. The whole story relies heavily on the stereotypes of Finnish tribes and dialects. Due to the dialects the English translation just doesn't work.

Plot in a nutshell: Finnish men are called into duty in summer 1941. The war starts. Some die. Some are not taking orders. Finns are fighting persistently against the giant foe, but still they loose the war.

Nuorena nukkunut - The maid Silja. Written by F.E. Sillanpää, who's the only Finnish writer awarded with Nobel prize in literature. 

Plot in a nutshell: There is a servant girl named Silja. She gets laid once and misses the guy until her last breath. I've read the novel twice, but I can't remember anything particular about it. Which probably tells something.

If you're planning to tackle a classic piece of Finnish literature - especially translated into English - I can't recommend any of the classics listed above, to be perfectly honest. They are meaningful stories and they have their place in the history, but they may not be the nicest ones to start with. If you want to read fine Finnish novels translated into English, I'd recommend you to grab on The Egyptian by Mika Waltari or Purge by Sofi Oksanen. I'd like to recommend also Vadelmavenepakolainen ("raspberry boat refugee") by Miika Nousiainen, but unfortunately it's not translated to English (yet).

Talk to my hand? Talking with my hands?

Typically Finnish people are communicating in quite minimalistic way. The sound of our language is monotonic, there are practically no variations in the pitching. The stress is almost always on the first syllable, which probably makes Finnish sound like a bit angry language. I believe the static tone and stiff rhythm of our native language reflects to our non-verbal communication as well: We don't talk with our hands like Italian. We don't make as rich gestures as Spanish while talking. We don't have a culture of debating like in US, so using tone of voice and little nuances in strategic way is nowhere near to our backbone.

Where should I put my hands? I'm pretty sure that is the question that has been going around in the presidential candidates' mind - even though they are trained and experienced in this field. In my opinion Haavisto is more fluent in his communication. He also uses his hands more when he speaks. On the other hand (pun intended), it's also easier to see from Haavisto's gestures if he's nervous or tense. Niinistö is using more facial expressions when he speaks. In a live appearance Niinistö is usually bit stiffer and quite traditional with his body language, including hands.

Both of the campaign teams have clearly thought through the hand issue in the campaign posters. I think neither of the candidates are exactly hitting the nail, but not failing miserably either. In this case Haavisto takes the safe, traditional and a bit boring approach. I appreciate Niinistö's attempt on doing something different, despite the slightly artificial end result. But I'm very, very happy that the candidates do not fall on the classic cliches: hanging your jacket on the shoulder or touching your chin - thank you!

Mind your ears

Music and lyrics are good way to learn language. I'm in great gratitude to New Kids On The Block about waking up my interest towards English language. If learning Finnish through lyrics is your cup of tea, go for it - but watch out these ones, they may cause permanent injuries:



Yö - A band who thinks they are interpreting the deepest feelings of the Finns, but they are taking it all a bit too seriously. Pompous misery.




Popeda - I guess Popeda tries to be a bit of a humor band, but the only problem is that they are not funny. Although I must admit that the lively and rich visualization of the video above made me laugh. Pate Mustajärvi, the vocalist of Popeda has been recording solo, so what's out for him as well.




Sakari Kuosmanen - Whenever there's a significant ice-hockey event, Sakari Kuosmanen crawls up from somewhere to sing Finlandia. He sings and acts as if he was touching people really deep. But. "Oh say can you see" may be the one and only way to start a baseball game in the States, but at least I'm having hard times with Sakari Kuosmanen, Finlandia and sports. Well, it's a matter of taste.

Swedish, a sweet dish?

Finland is a bilingual country, the official languages being Finnish and Swedish. About 90% of the population speaks Finnish and about 5% Swedish as their mother tongue. In most of the schools Finnish speaking kids start studying Swedish on the seventh grade. And if you're living in 100% Finnish speaking area (such as my home town Lappeenranta), you're in the worst phase of your teenage life and you're having a Swedish teacher who has the least possible amount of charisma and teaching skills... well, that's why many people feel they are forced to study Swedish.

I never felt like I was forced to study Swedish. I've always thought it's pretty natural to study other languages, at least couple of them, if your mother tongue is used by only 5 million other people. On the other hand, I must admit that nowadays it would more useful to study Russian, Chinese or Spanish rather than Swedish. But the bottom line is that learning almost any language is good for you.

In general these articles written by Ilkka Malmberg are a cliche, but the graph is quite to the point. Yellow color represents the area where Swedish can be considered more useful than Russian language, whereas in the orange area it's quite the opposite. The striped area is somewhere in between.

And you never know when you really need your second language. You may end up being married to a person from another language background. Today I'm quite happy I was awake in the Swedish class, and because of that I'm able to understand what my in-laws are speaking. My own Swedish output may not be super fluent - but a schnapps (or four) of akvavit usually helps.